The Mozilla Foundation’s servers yesterday buckled under the strain of its own PR stunt to convince World+Dog to download Firefox 3 and set a new record over a 24-hour period.
So far, at the time of writing, the open source organisation is claiming just over 7m downloads of its latest browser - despite the fact that at launch …

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I think

Firefox 3.0 doesn't work that well for me

It fires up ok, but once I have clicked on something in on the page I have to alt tab out and back to allow me to click/input again. Of course it's probably all my fault for using windows XP but hey I'm young...

Troll

El Reg bias up to the extreme, eh!

Let's have a look.

"So far, at the time of writing, the open source organisation is claiming just over 7m downloads of its latest browser - despite the fact that at launch the Mozilla’s servers went titsup, apparently under the weight of demand."

Why's the word "despite" in there? Can 7m downloads not have happened if initially the servers didn't cope?

"No matter though, said Mozilla, which decided instead to simply bypass the small detail of its servers spitting out html errors and being largely unavailable at launch by starting the official download day once the site finally went live nearly five hours later than planned."

What's wrong with this? If the records people accept it, then it's fine. It's still within a 24 hour period.

"Mozilla will make the record books for the most software downloaded in 24 hours, seeing as there’s no Guinness World Record to beat."

7.2m downloads (as of 16:33 BST) is pretty impressive. Glad you gave it its due.

As you then go on to quote someone who exactly reiterates that point (do you have a minimum word count?) it doesn't sound as though you thought this was a good thing. Thankfully the sound of 7.2m people not caring is a pleasant one, and it all bodes well for raising the profile of alternative browsers, so that people like me can write better websites.

Firefox 3 + Flash = Borked

I've been running Firefox 3 beta for a while with no problems. I 'upgraded' today to Firefox 3 and flash websites started reporting that I needed to install flash. So, I dutifully REinstalled flash from the Adobe site and now ALL flash based content is borked in Firefox. In IE7, it all works fine. My (photography) website uses simpleviewer. Consequently, it doesn't work with Firefox 3 Some upgrade, eh ?

I don't see the point...

So what if they get the all time, world record for downloads ever in the whole Universe? They're giving it away free. Seven million downloads don't mean the program even works, or that if it works, it does a good job.

I'm not impressed at being able to give something away for free to a lot of people. I'd be much more impressed if someone *sold* seven million browsers in one day, even if they only charged a small fee.

What I don't get is...

...why people were so desperate for the official launch. Look at it this way - it's a browser, that's all, and it won't kill you to wait a few more minutes to get it. Sure, you might really wanna support Mozilla, but taking down their servers isn't a good way to go about that. Oh, and if you had RC2 then you pretty much had the real deal anyway, so it was even more pointless (though that's not to say you shouldn't have bothered supporting the record). Still, they succeeded regardless and kudos to 'em for it, I just didn't quite understand the "omfg eye needz mi feyerfocks n ur usles coderz r stopin mi!!" vibe going around.

RE: El Reg bias up to the extreme, eh!

I think the use of 'despite' was fine, they were simply meaning if the servers has coped imagine how many downloads could have been registered. Why do you seem to think that Mozilla deserves such praise for this epic fail of a PR stunt?

...and no x86 64-bit package...

7,000,000 and one, so help me god

i couldn't resist the temptation to find out if it's worth it or not

and my AdBlocker plugin doesn't work so now - but interestingly, i mainly installed that to stop the poxy adverts on theregister because they would take ages to display before old firefox would render the actual news text. however, FF3 isn't doing too badly and loading all the items quickly

but what on earth is the point of the HUGE, highlighted green back button?

is Mozilla suggesting that it's users are too stupid to work out which way is back and which is forward?

it's very ugly and i'm hoping that a theme comes out soon that can make it look more like the old interface

7 million in 1 day not impressive

"Sorry off-topic, but when does the BBC news website *ever* go down?"

I don't even recall it shitting itself during the 7/7 and 21/7 incidents - mind you, I only checked it about two hours after the event after extricating myself from Kings Cross and chewing the fat with the hundreds of people wandering around aimlessly for a bit, before walking to the office.

All thanks to the unique way it's funded, eh?

Back on topic, 7m ain't a bad figure, be interesting to see how it compares to other 'elective'* downloads in the future.

Steven R

*IE not Flash player/Adobe Reader, as you *need* those these days...but open source OSs, film releases, stuff that you want, rather than need.

FireFoxing

I have been a Firefox user for ~2 years, and I am never going back to IE. I tried Safari for Windows but there were too many incompatibilities and random freezes. This new version of FireFox is super fast and appears to be stable, hopefully more people will give it a shot.

Ho Hum

As mentioned, world record my a_s. There has never been any record before - so how can you say it's a record?

Mozilla disabled 2.x users from using the update utility in 2.x to check allow downloading 3.0 because Mozilla wanted 2.x to download 3.0 and not get it from the browser's update. Almost cheating there.

Some are claiming that the 2+ hour outage was because too many people wanted to get a copy. But according to a site meter, the problems occured BEFORE the 10am PDT time. I can't see a whole bunch of requests that are just text and images bogging down a site unless the site can't handle the traffic.

Oh ya. Installed 3.0 over my 2.0.0.12. At the end of the install, kept the checkbox to run 3.0 after the installer finishes. Up comes the title bar saying 3.0 RC2. And release notes 3.0 RC2! I close it and re-open and now it shows the release 3.0. Huh?

Still Can't Find It

I'm still looking for a proper download link.

I mean, I've found links that SAY they're to the new version 3.0, but when I follow them, they're to tarballs dated as of 10 June. Well, THAT can't be right. It was released on the 17th, right? Mid day on the 17th! I'm SURE I read that somewhere. Moreover, they spent all morning rebuilding it or something. I'm sure I remember there was some kind of 2 hour delay.

Okay, maybe the timestamp's just wrong. And you know how the wrong time setting on a computer can wreak all kinds of network havoc, right? Okay, let's test that therory:

If I install the tarball anyway, why, the "Back" button isn't bigger, like they said it should be ("They" being the "they" who have seen the real software, while I am seeing some kind of falsification). It's exactly the same size as the "Forward" button. The proof? About:Firefox says "Gecko/2008052912".

Why, this was built back in May! This isn't the June 17th thing at all!

@Robert Grant

@Bucky

Actually the final builds were the RC3 build which is dated a week ago. These were passed so were simply copied into the "3.0" directory as is without any rebuilding.

Anyway, I got my copy on the morning of the 17th, as they were up on the official FTP server already. Wasn't going to wait till 6pm BST to download it for some silly stunt. A stunt which sounds like didn't do too well, because think about it, 7 million "hits" for 24 hours for the entire world? Well well too small.

BBC Site

Little help please

I just Dled FF3 and now I cannot access the net. It acts like there is something preventing it from getting on...I can connect just fine with IE browser, but the FF browser no luck.

Failed to Connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.google.com.

Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.

* Could the site be temporarily unavailable? Try again later.

* Are you unable to browse other sites? Check the computer's network connection.

* Is your computer or network protected by a firewall or proxy? Incorrect settings can interfere with Web browsing.

Is the error message I get. What gives? anyone know a setting I should change? I Dled it on my desktop this AM and had no problems. But when I try from my laptop...I got screwed. I have re-Dled, re-installed and re-booted as well. If I had know this would happen, I would have left everything alone...sigh...

Still, 8 mil is impressive

Regardless of opinion or distaste, 8 million in one day (current estimate from spread http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/) is quite a number. In terms of market share it's big considering the life of the product. Call it a stunt but even with the stunt there is still a lot of polarized views where either the user loves it and will download it or hates it and will not even think of downloading it.

It somewhat surprises me though that the US had the most downloads world wide, not to mention Japan being third. I guess what surprised me even more was how many downloaded from Iran and how few downloaded from China. This brings up some information that I wouldn't have expected.

re: WHO IS USING FIREFOX, WITH --OPERA-- AROUND

Just a shame Opera can't stop you typing in caps-lock or fix your spelling mistakes, eh?

@Robert Grant

The problem with the server failure is that they postponed the 24-hour period. All other Guiness Record attempts are strictly monitored. You don't see someone going for the domino records, knocking over a couple of hundred, and then saying, it's alright, we'll just reset them and try it again, eh? Land speed records have to be two consecutive runs, there and back - you can't go one way and then say, well the cars a bit pooped, we'll let it cool down over night and try again tomorrow.

So Mozilla moving the 24-hour period like that makes a mockery of the whole event.

@WHO IS USING FIREFOX, WITH --OPERA-- AROUND

"oPERA IS SO GOOD THAT I HAVE STOPPED USINE ff YEAR AGO !!"

Your headwand appears to have whammed the caps lock key - remember to use your eyes and look for the pretty light where it says 'CAPS LOCK' on the keyboard itself, and ensure it is extinguished before letting your random, pointless, coherent-argument argument free, stream-of-consciousness piss pollute Teh InterTard.

Hope that helps.

Anyway, I like Opera, but as noted on another article, I use it as my JS free browser to get around annoying adverts and some of the more interesting exploits. it's not a perfect workaround [I could use Lynx, arf] but I like it for what it does. I just wish it had a 'reload all tabs' option. There's probably a plug in for that somewhere though.

Steven "Has keyboard, can type" Raith.

PS: If anyone is interested - and that's a figure of speech, rather than a question - Flash 10 beta seems to work relatively well with FF3 on Ubuntu - the installer is *much* friendlier as well. "./flashplayer10-installer" as root terminal, give it the location of your firefox installation [/usr/lib/firefox-3.0 probably], and it's done. Sweet.

Re: Wow, so here's ElReg's loony bin!

@ Steven Raith

<Quote>

Anyway, I like Opera, but as noted on another article, I use it as my JS free browser to get around annoying adverts and some of the more interesting exploits. it's not a perfect workaround [I could use Lynx, arf] but I like it for what it does. I just wish it had a 'reload all tabs' option. There's probably a plug in for that somewhere though.

<\Quote>

The Reload all option is something I have liked about Opera for years and haven't easily found an option to do it in any other broswer, I am ready to be correct on that though.

Try CTRL and F5 in 9.27 or earlier, and by looking at my shortcuts, CTRL-ALT-R should do it under 9.50. Even if it doesn't, go to Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts, and Under Keyboard Setup, Duplicate and then rename the standard setup, then edit the new setting. Under Applications choose New, type in the keyboard shortcut you want to use under input, making sure it isin't in use already, and then type "reload all", without quotes, under action, OK this and then select your new setting and OK again. I have also edited my menu files, this has t be done in a text editor, to give me reload all otpions from various right clicks as well.

Opera - MEH!

@ Stuart Castle

"Meh..

Never could get on with Firefox. Don't like having to install addons just to get a decent browsing experience.

Much prefer Opera"

Exactly the inverse of my reaction. I have tried Opera several times, and just can't get over my revulsion. It's bloated, unimpressive and no faster than FF. YMMV of course, and clearly does, but whenever I read endless paeans to that nasty noxious norwegian nightmare I have to speak up in defence of FF. I even prefer IE7 to Opera. For me, opera is to be seen and heard, not used on the Web.

Give me Netscape 3.0 or give me....

I kind of like it

Seems pretty "snappy". Lot's of little tweaks that make it just that much easier to get around and most of my "must have" extensions are working fine.

I could live with any of the browsers to be honest with you and since I'm a web developer I have to test on them all, but I guess I still like FF best once I factor in the extensions and customizations that I have now.